


wait until the waiting's done (the quiet desert remix)

by akaparalian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Keith (Voltron)'s Shack, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 07, Season 8 does not exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 07:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19246663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: As soon as he's halfway recovered from the battle with Sendak and falling to Earth in the aftermath, Keith disappears out to the desert shack. It takes him a little while, but Shiro catches up.





	wait until the waiting's done (the quiet desert remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imagines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/gifts).
  * Inspired by [something great together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941295) by [imagines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/pseuds/imagines). 



> I can't believe I remixed a fic where they fuck into a fic where they don't fuck. _Who am I._
> 
> Still, I hope you enjoy this, imagines! The fic I chose to remix was actually one of the very first fics I read in VLD fandom, so it felt like it absolutely _had_ to be the one I chose to work with for this event -- pretty serendipitous that I was assigned to you at all, really!
> 
> Thanks to EP for the beta!

Keith has been out of the hospital for a week when Shiro finally makes it out to the shack.

“I’m glad you made it,” Keith says. It’s awkward, and silly, and he feels a little dumb saying it, becuase it’s not like Shiro hasn’t been here before — it’s not like he has any reason to expect Shiro might have gotten lost — but he doesn’t quite know what else to say, and for once in his life, he can’t quite let the silence sit without filling it.

The shack hasn’t changed much since they left Earth. Honestly, when he’d finally come to check on it after everything, Keith had mostly just been surprised it was still standing, let alone basically untouched, but there it had been, like an old washed-out skeleton, or like something that had always been there and always would. Obviously that wasn’t true — Keith might not have built it, but his dad had, and there were still places where you could tell he hadn’t done an altogether perfect job of laying the foundation. Still, it was _more_ than enough familiarity and comfort to make the tightness in his chest ease in his first days back on his feet, and he hasn’t much left since he got here.

“The landscape’s changed a little,” Shiro says, the twist of his mouth a little sardonic as he looks around at the remnants of Keith’s post-Garrison life: the map that’s still up on the corkboard, the box of old textbooks he’s never quite known what to do with. “New canyons and valleys, thanks to everything that’s happened. But this place is still exactly the same.”

Keith snorts. “You know I’m not exactly the home decor type. I didn’t see the need to change things up.”

Shiro laughs quietly, turning back to face Keith instead of peering around at the dusty corners of the room. It’s almost sunset; he’d said, when Keith had asked him to come out and see him, that he would come straight from the Garrison as soon as he could get away, and sure enough the hoverbike had pulled up outside just as the light was starting to fade. The low light filtering in through the window glaces off of Shiro’s silver hair, catches the sharp jut of his jaw and lays shadows underneath. Keith swallows, throat suddenly dry, and wishes he had something to do with his hands.

“No, you’re right,” Shiro says easily. His voice is so low, with just the two of them in this old house that creaks in the wind, and Keith is starting to think that this was maybe a bad idea after all. Maybe he should have gone out to the Garrison and spent some time packed in with the rest of them rather than having Shiro come out here; maybe that would have been better, or safer, anyway. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that nothing’s changed. But it looks just like it did when I got back from Kerberos — hell,” he adds, laughing again, “it still looks just like it did before I _left_ for Kerberos.” He pauses, just a second of hesitation that probably shouldn’t send Keith’s heart spinning, and then says half a second too late, “Do you remember that?”

Keith bites his lip. “Sure,” he says, then clears his throat a little and corrects himself: “Obviously.”

It would take a lot — more than years drifting through space together, more than becoming the figureheads of an intergalactic war, more than slipping off the edge of oblivion hand in hand — to make him forget curling up together in the way-too-small cot he’d drug out from the surplus shop in town and staying up talking quietly until the wee hours, and then staring at Shiro’s face once he had finally drifted off to sleep, counting the shadows his eyelashes left on his cheeks in the watery moonlight and thinking with every heartbeat, _He’s leaving. Shiro’s leaving tomorrow. He’s leaving._

He’d told himself, originally, that it would be his moment — it had been Shiro’s idea to go out to the shack together for his last night on Earth, but Keith would use it to his advantage and finally confess the tight knot of feelings in his chest, anxiety all bound up with affection and frustration and longing. The thought seems horribly naive now; hell, it’d seemed naive even the very next morning, when he woke up to Shiro quietly shuffling around and swearing at the little gas stove as he made breakfast and felt his heart sink down to his toes, knowing that his window was gone.

“Obviously,” Shiro repeats, quiet and soft, and Keith thinks, _I love you_.

_He knows that_ , he reminds himself. _He knows that and he hasn’t said anything about it._

_But he came anyway,_ another voice says, quieter, more insidious. _He knows you love him, but he came out here with you. You’re in the middle of the desert, you’re all alone. He’s clearly not uncomfortable._

_Shut up_ , Keith tells that part of his mind caustically, and tries to leave it at that.

“So,” he says, just a little bit too loudly, trying to drown out his own thoughts. He clears his throat, stares fixedly at a point just to the left of Shiro’s chin, and prays that his face isn’t turning red — or that, if it is, Shiro will maybe blame it on the way all the air in the room suddenly seems to be oppressively still and heavy. “You — uh — how have things been? At the Garrison?”

Shiro watches him wordlessly for a second, his head tilted slightly to the side. “Good,” he says, eventually; his voice is light, though his intense gaze doesn’t lessen in the slightest. “Reconstruction is well underway, and we’re working to get the Atlas properly outfitted.”

Keith nods. His tongue darts out to wet his lower lip, and he’s struggling to think of something to say that sounds halfway intelligent when Shiro takes a step forward and he jumps what feels like half a foot in the air.

It feels obvious, like he’s giving himself away with every twitchy, uncertain motion and hitched breath, but Shiro just takes another step closer. Keith wonders, mind spinning wildly, when he got this bad at managing things. He’s been in love with Shiro for years and years and years, hasn’t he? Closer to a fucking _decade_ , if he’s being honest. So why is it that he’s so much less in control _now_ than he was at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, when Shiro was engaged to another man or launching off to the edge of the solar system or crashing back into his life like a falling star?

Shiro takes another step forward. “You know,” he says, and Keith’s heartbeat thuds in his ears, because after all this time, he’s not about to lie to himself, but there’s something in Shiro’s eyes that he’s beginning to realize he can’t deny; it makes him dizzy just to think about it, that after all this time, it could just be so _easy_ , but there’s something in Shiro’s eyes, and he’s not looking away, “when you came out here basically as soon as they’d let you leave the hospital, I thought you just needed some time. But it’s been almost a week, and the first thing anyone’s heard from you is when you asked me to come out here, so now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have let you come out here alone.”

He takes another step, and he’s thoroughly in Keith’s space now, except Keith can’t move, his feet rooted to the floor and his breath quickening. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” he murmurs, and then his eyes clearly, distinctly, flit down to Keith’s lips and back up. “You shouldn’t have had to ask, I was just — I thought maybe you wanted space.”

“I did,” Keith breathes, because speaking any louder feels like it would break some sort of spell. “I thought I did. I thought — fuck.”

“And I’m sorry I let you say _I love you_ first,” Shiro continues. “And while I wasn’t actually me, and while I was trying to kill you. And I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out if you really meant it until just now.”

“Just now?” At this point, even breathing seems to be more than Keith can manage. But Shiro just keeps _looking_ at him, like what he’s really looking at is deep below the surface.

“It’s right there on your face,” Shiro explains, as though that means anything — and somehow it does, somehow it makes perfect sense, because Keith is staring into his eyes and seeing everything he never really thought he’d get to have. 

_Oh, God,_ Keith thinks distantly. _This is happening_.

“Yeah,” Shiro says, laughing quietly. Apparently Keith’s lost control of his brain-to-mouth filter, on top of everything else. “Sorry I made you wait.”

“I’d wait a lot longer than this if I had to,” Keith tells him, and he means to add, _but I’m glad I_ don’t _have to,_ except the words get caught up and swallowed right out of his mouth, because Shiro leans down and kisses him, and immediately the whole world goes still. It’s not fireworks, or a shockwave, or like drowning: it’s quiet, and certain, and familiar. It’s coming home.

“I love you,” Shiro tells him for the first time as they stand there together, the sun slipping below the horizon just outside the window and the stars already starting to come out. 

“I love you, too,” Keith tells him with his heart still halfway to climbing out his throat, and at least in some regards, it’s even sweeter for the waiting.


End file.
